In most households, hot water is obtained from taps by opening the hot water valve and letting the water run until the cool water in the line is replaced with hot water from the hot water supply until it is finally discharged from the hot water tap. Depending upon the distance of the hot water tap from the hot water supply, this can take anywhere from a few up to 20-30 seconds and more.
Not only is such a method inconvenient, but it is wasteful of literally billions of gallons of fresh, clean, costly and often scarce drinking water which is allowed to discharge through the drain. Not only is this wasteful of our natural resource of water, but it is wasteful of energy since it requires energy for every gallon of water pumped to and discharged from a tap.
A number of systems have been devised to avoid these problems and provide instant hot water at the tap. Unfortunately, however, these systems have been expensive, relatively complicated, including for example auxilliary water heating components or separate cold water return lines to the hot water supply with electric circulating pumps running twenty-four hours a day. These prior art systems are expensive and usually require installation by skilled tradesmen. Therefore instant hot water systems have not come into widespread, general use.
There accordingly exists a need for a simple, efficient, inexpensive and easy to install instant hot water system which does not suffer from the disadvantages of the prior art.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide a unique, instant hot water system which is efficient, yet simple in construction and installation and therefore inexpensive to install.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such a unique instant hot water system which can be installed simply by almost any household member.